TEACH KIDS ENGLISH BEFORE GRADE 6

I READ Lesley Satchel’s contribution with interest.

There is no doubt there needs to be more debate on this complex issue. Lesley mentions that township schools teach pupils in their mother tongue until Grade 5 and then transfer to English or Afrikaans.

Now here is the problem. As Lesley says, English is not easy to learn and it is far too late in Grade 5 to be thrown in at the deep end and be taught in a foreign (to these kids) language.

Most of my friends who are fluent in a black language learnt it on farms where they grew up with black kids and interacted with them.

The black kids also learnt English. If I look at most of my friends’ kids who learnt a black language in high school, none of them are fluent in it and none could go out and do a job in that language.

So the same goes for township kids who have learnt English too late. Maybe we need to look at the Scandinavian school system and see how all the kids there become so fluent in English. It’s because they were taught English at a young age, when kids’ brains are most receptive to learning. This reception for learning diminishes as we get older, so high school is not the place to begin learning a foreign language.

Now Lesley says indigenous languages are not developed because there seems to be no need for that.

That again is the problem. There are too many languages in our country and they pertain only to certain areas.

So how do these kids move on from their area without being fluent in a world language that’s globally acceptable? BARBIE SANDLER | Claremont